A reporter for a weekly newspaper leads a very scheduled and oftentimes hectic life with hard deadlines every week.

Sprinkled in the day job are night meetings, weekend events, and holiday coverage that take time away from one’s family and sanity time.

After almost two years here at the Herald Journal, I’ve decided to cut back to part-time. I’ll still be writing Howard Lake news and feature stories, but someone else will cover other types of stories I normally would do and events, and my column will now only appear occasionally.

I’m excited that I have the opportunity to keep the relationships that I’ve developed with everyone in the community, yet have time to take a breath.

I’m always honored when people I’ve met and people I haven’t met in the community call me and give me tips for news or feature stories. Please keep the ideas coming!

I appreciate every suggestion I get. Without those tips, I’d be treading water a lot more than usual.

Because I’ll mainly be writing from home, I’ll miss my daily contact with my cohorts at the office.

I’ll have less daily “motherly” advice from Linda Scherer, whom I’ve claimed as my second mother since my mom lives in Arizona. Not to slight my mother, she does everything right in the mom department and is very supportive over the long distance. I don’t think too much motherly advice could hurt anyone.

Ivan Raconteur won’t have long hair to pull as he walks by the cubicle I’ve vacated. I’ll miss giving him looks while contorting my “evil eyebrows” as he would say.

Lynda Jensen won’t have to perpetually ponder how I walk around in three and four-inch high heels since she won’t see them as much.

I have big plans for my upcoming free time that will be created from going to part-time. Number one will be more time spent with my boys.

With summer just around the corner, I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do than to make sure they have a fun and relaxed summer vacation. Before I know it, they’ll be grown up, and I don’t want to regret not spending more time with them.

My duck operation has taken a hit with me working full-time. I plan to build that back up to where it was two years ago.

To all of you working full-time and maintaining some kind of life, I give you credit!!

Kid-isms

I told the boys we would be taking our puppy Bella to puppy kindergarten, which is basically a puppy training class.